


L'amour n'est pas une tragedie

by morethanprinceofcats



Category: La Légende du Roi Arthur - Savio & Skread & Zaho/Chouquet/Attia
Genre: Eventual Sex, F/M, Past Rape/Non-con, Rape Culture, Seduction
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-31
Updated: 2020-02-01
Packaged: 2021-02-25 12:28:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22496119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morethanprinceofcats/pseuds/morethanprinceofcats
Summary: Arthur's most trusted adviser conceives of a plan to turn Morgana's heart away from vengeance, but what will happen to his own in the process?
Relationships: Merlin/Morgane (La Légende du Roi Arthur)





	1. Prologue

Those who did not have it called it “the gift” of foresight, but those, like Merlin, who possessed it and honed it into enough of a skill to be of some use, knew it as anything but. It was certain to Merlin the king who would unite Britain, the king who would be its _true_ king for all the ages of man, would be of Uther Pendragon’s line. But Uther Pendragon was little more than a warlord, scarcely deserving of the title of king. 

He would take no wife and father no princes. His final demand for the lady Ygraine was given at dusk, his eyes taking on the demonic cast of the setting sun in a shadowed face, in a courtyard neglected and grown over with ivy.

“It must be Ygraine. I love her as I can love no other woman. If you were a man to see it! Ah, my false friend. If you are true to me, you will deliver her to me. Any way. Any means. It must be her.”

Merlin had been sired on an unsuspecting princess as she dreamed in her bed by a voracious demon. He was not a stranger to the notion of conception by any means. And yet he was a man all the same, or had been once. Could the same be said of Uther? One moment he thought not; the next he thought, if not, what else? 

“You foresee my son will be a great king,” said Uther casually, while the sun died over Merlin’s shoulder.

“Yes. I have seen it,” Merlin said with reluctance. His hands were cold in the sleeves of his cloak.

“A son must have a mother,” chuckled the king. “Is it not so?”

This was a pact between them, though Uther knew it not. He believed he gave commands, and Merlin followed them. Merlin obeyed a higher law than this.

Ygraine’s husband was a loyal follower of Uther’s. They had feasted at his table and smiled and laughed with his family, but these people had been as insubstantial as shadows to the king. He had had other men’s wives before. He could not understand why this one eluded him, and his desire for her, with her dark eyes and full lips, only increased with her pleas of fidelity.

Merlin had heard them one night, as he had walked invisible closely by his king. Ygraine hiding behind a pillar. Uther tearing her sleeve in his efforts to entrap her. You have other loyalties, Uther had insisted; but every man was a king in his own home and to his own wife, pledged Ygraine. She escaped; Uther cursed, stomped off; Merlin alone remained, and long had he brooded.

“You will have the Lady Ygraine,” said Merlin. “Gorlois will absent her bed tonight, called away to a sudden battle with encroaching barbarians. Somehow…. Somehow I will make her yours.” _And Britain will have a far superior king_ , he thought. _So be it._

He was loathe to injure the woman, though he did not think that Uther would be pleased with him if he suggested he take her by force. After all, he might have already done so if that had been his wish. And the daughters, indulged and adored by their parents… Morgause, the obedient one, and Morgana, troubling talented, whose prior mistrust of the king spoke to a woman’s intuition that surpassed her years… It would set a poor example of womanhood for them to see their mother shamed. A notion that eased his conscience came to him, one in which their small family would remain undisturbed. 

A raven cawed from atop a stone tower and took flight, and nighttime was upon them very, very soon.


	2. Dévorant Ses Yeux

All that Merlin saw was true. But that did not mean he knew what he was seeing. And as he had once failed to persuade the father to choose a bride who was free to have him, he could not dissuade the son from his choice in Guenivere. As soon as he saw her, a forest lily everlasting blossoming from sorrow into joy, liberated by Excalibur from her shameful forced betrothal, Arthur had to have her. 

It was not entirely the same. There was no demand for Merlin to make her his; Guenivere freely gave herself. And well might he judge the girl her choice, for Malageant was Uther’s heir in character, little though Merlin would give voice to the thought. But he could see Arthur’s doom when he looked at her, hovering as though a little before her face, a glittering mirage. He could see little else. He had tried. Some things were beyond him, even if he looked.

Merlin did not always look, and he had regretted of this bitterly when Morgana had entered Arthur’s court and Arthur’s life… and soon bewitched her brother into entering her. It was the magic he had once cloaked Uther Pendragon in, so that Ygraine might take the seed of the king of Britain in the joyous belief that it was her own beloved husband’s. How Uther had smiled over his secret and how disgusted Merlin had been at his gratitude. If he had cared to look further then, he might have seen what he had wrought. Gorlois had died that night in battle, and Ygraine in childbirth. There had always been a glitter about their youngest daughter, Morgana. Once, unseen, as he had pondered in his frustration the spell Ygraine had unwittingly cast on his king and what power he had to break it, he had stood by their hearth and gaze on them; and their youngest daughter had laid down her volume of stories and stared up into his eyes. 

She could not see him, but he sensed she knew his presence. And there in the dark eyes he saw there was something written, but he had not cared to read it.

Could he have spared Arthur his sister’s vengeance if he had? Or, like the travesty that had led Morgana to her cruel retaliation, had that too been the will of destiny? Merlin knew only that it would have given him relief to know for certain, and for his own sake if nothing else, he wished that he had tried. But the child had unnerved him. He had not wanted to see her future, and heavy with power, beauty and misery as it had proved to be, he understood himself in that, but could not offer himself forgiveness.

But there was one who could still have it. Lit unnaturally well in the woods surrounding Camelot in spite of the cloud cover or even the trees, he espied Morgana herself. He knew her from the gleam of starlight that illuminated her profile and figure. She had inherited her mother’s lips, her mother’s height, her fullness of form: outlined in silver her saw her part her lips as though distantly she would begin to speak, outlined in starlight he saw the rise and fall of her breasts. He read torment in her dark eyes. 

It was the eve of Samhain, and he felt the whispers of spirits everywhere. Did she speak to her mother here in the darkness, far from the wedding feast? He approached her so noiselessly even she could not detect him now.

“Morgana,” he said, stepping into view.

She startled, drawing into herself as though she were closing a box. Her beautiful face twisted carelessly into a sneer.

“Have you come to tell me news of the revels, you old fool?” she called out to him. “Or perhaps you sensed my presence, and came to ward me off.” She held up her hands and crossed them at the wrists, wiggling her fingers in a mockery of a ward. “If you fear for your beloved king, don’t fret. I have no designs on his wedding night. I wish him every joy in it.”

Morgana leaned back into the shadows, and the starlight vanished from all but her eyes. He did not dare approach her any further, yet although he spoke in a low voice, it carried to her effortlessly, as if he spoke from right beside her.

“Arthur is blameless in the sins of his father,” he said. He extended his hands in supplication. “Morgana; Morgana... You seek vengeance against a dead man, in the name of the mother you both share. Let go of it. Come and be forgiven by him, and forgive him the evil of being born.”

Morgana slid both of her hands over her womb caressingly.

“Will you forgive our child the same evil? I don’t think you will.”

Merlin saw unflinchingly. A dark-haired young man holding a sword amidst the ghostly sounds of warfare. His king, now so young, his face lined with cares and worries, his hair streaked grey. His face twisted with the pain of betrayal.

Merlin’s own face betrayed nothing.

“No child is born evil,” he said. 

Morgana stepped out into the starlight once more. Unlike him, she still made noise as her soft leather boots found footing in the dewy grass, but he was unnerved by how little it was. How many years had she spent in the Ageless Lands, honing her own skills with magic? He had a strange desire to test her, to observe her. To teach her where she lacked. 

He did not even realize how close she came to him until he felt her breath. Warm and fragrant with mulling spices. Had she been drinking? Merlin lacked the need, and no longer remembered when it first left his undying body. Had she needed wine, or merely craved it?

“A child born of lies from a man born of lies,” she whispered scornfully. “What else could he be? And more than lies, he will be born of my misery. He will be the child I deserve… And the child Arthur deserves.”

The certainty shook him as the hatred did not. Morgana had sought conception itself, not merely karmic vengeance. He had not thought it went any deeper than that. Now he realized he saw only ripples on the surface of a lake, ignorant of the churning in the depths. Much like the way he had once seen the eyes of a child.

“I see your pain,” said Merlin. He touched the back of her hand and she withdrew it from him; though she stepped backward, he moved towards her unerringly. “And I understand it. But your hate will only bring more.”

Morgana stepped towards him instead, startling him enough that he let her pass without trying to block her way. Her hip struck his, deliberately. Then she turned.

“I don’t  _ hate _ him. Not on his own wedding night. He’s very fortunate,” she said, in a voice that nearly purred. “He’s got someone to love him, and who have I got?”

She had shadows that danced around her, starlight that sang in her dark eyes, spirits that whispered malice in her ears. She spoke tauntingly, but he saw a loose thread, and he pulled it.

“You have a brother,” he whispered. “There is always time. Morgana…”

He saw the dark eyes wet with sorrow, fear flooding her face. For a moment she was so vulnerable he could glide his hand up her arm and not repulse her. He wondered when the last time she had been touched was, and knew, with clarity, it was the night she had conceived her child.

As if she had the same thoughts, her hand covered his own… and then flung it off.

“A brother who despises me,” she whispered. Her hand hovered over her stomach, now reluctant to touch it. But he understood what was left unsaid. Had she done that, in some twisted way, to ensure that path was closed to her? She had done something unforgivable to someone who could have loved her, and ensured in the process that he now could not. Merlin could not hate someone so pitiable. 

“Will you perform the rites, druid?” she asked idly. In passing, she returned his touch with insouciance, running her fingertips up his wrist. He would not be startled by a woman’s hand, not he, so ageless and powerful. Nonetheless he stepped out of her reach. Her caress was a perversion of tenderness.

“I will marry them in the sight of the old gods, as well as the new one,” he said carefully.

Morgana’s shoulders lifted and fell in a shrug. 

“Then it is you,” she said, with a backward glance, her face in shadow, “who will be Arthur’s doom. Because you know what Guenivere is, druid. You know, and so do I.”

He watched the grass where she’d last cast a shadow long after Morgana passed from the woods into memory, willing Arthur to wait just a short while longer for his bride. 

The time to read the future in Morgana’s eyes had passed; he had not taken advantage of it then and he had suffered for it. 

And yet… 

And yet here he was, trying to compel their mystery to reveal itself to him. There was still something to be read in her eyes. 

He would take advantage of it this time, if he could. 


	3. Chapter 3

Wind whistled through chinks in the stone walls of an abandoned Roman fortress, but Merlin no longer felt the cold. The bird perched on his bookshelf did, however, and cawed to complain of it.

“No, you don’t,” he chided without thinking. It cawed at him and took to wing. 

“That was very rude,” he called back, to no response. Merlin ran his calloused fingertips over a yellowing page. He could prolong his own life, his own youth, through magic, and do all he could to protect his belongings from the elements; but still books withered, buildings fell into disrepair.  _ You cannot fix everything, _ he told himself. But how tempting it was to try.

That, however, must be the only temptation. The rules of the bargain he had made were very clear on that. There had been other women, even women he had trained in the magical arts, who had tempted him. He had very politely declined. There was no woman worth the pursuit to which he had dedicated his entire life, and which was only now coming to real fruition. He would guide and shape Britain and make it a place of great peace and prosperity. Through Arthur, it could be done. He was the one true king. He had been worth whatever sorrow had birthed him. If Ygraine had suffered, if Gorlois had, Merlin was sincerely sorry; he had tried to spare every individual life he had come across. But he followed a longer path than they did. He could not stop along the way.

But Morgana… 

Morgana was not a stop along the way, no. He could see her, just barely; she would last as long as her brother, their fates as intertwined as their bodies had been, the deplorable night they had conceived their child. Doubtless her own power veiled her from his sight, for he could not make out any greater details. The suppression of her malice was no idle pastime; it was vital to Arthur’s rule, to the kingdom to which Merlin had dedicated himself the fatal twilight he swore his vows.

He remembered it, kneeling in grass slicked with dew. He had felt the chill then, and had done nothing to suppress his shivering. One should shiver at times like that. A servant must show humility, and that was what he pledged himself to be: a servant.

But if he pursued his own pleasures, if he betrayed his vows and his kingdom, all for the touch of a woman, it would unmake him. He would still be Merlin. But who was Merlin, without the bargain he had made? And who would Arthur be, without him?

He closed the book, still troubled with thoughts.

There were methods of combating Morgana that would not risk himself… at least not in that fashion. He was not fool enough to believe that he was so greatly superior to Morgana that she could not harm him, or even defeat him. His own future was also veiled. If he fell to her, either in overt battle or something insidious and secret, it would leave Camelot unprotected from a dangerous sorceress.

And yet it seemed clear to him that if his motives were pure, and Camelot always his first priority, there was no risk at all. And this method had a strong chance of success. Morgana’s sweet dark eyes betrayed her, and she spoke too rashly. 

_ “He’s got someone to love him, and what have I got?” _

This was the wound Merlin had inadvertently left in her, fail to protect Ygraine as he had. Morgana had lost her father forever that night, and her mother too had not survived his scheme; Merlin knew that horror as well as heartbreak was responsible for that, for the reports of her Gorlois’ death had made her coupling with him an impossibility, and yet it had been no dream, no spirit in heaven who had lain with her: such incorporeal things cannot plant sons.

Love. No one loved her. She had not sought love, she had sought revenge… and found it. But she was not yet satisfied, and a woman like that could bring a king to his knees and make an entire kingdom bleed.

Unless, first, she found satisfaction elsewhere.

His companion found his shoulder again, with a loud flap of its wings. The raven cawed loudly, directly above his ear.

“Yes, of course it’s a terrible idea,” he said, shelving the volume, and reaching for the next. The wind came in a thin wail, disturbing his robe and his hair. “But what if it works?”


End file.
